Neural Network Models as Evidence for Different Types of Visual Representations

Cook (1995) criticizes the work of Jacobs and Kosslyn (1994) on spatial relations, shape representations, and receptive fields in neural network models on the grounds that first-order correlations between input and output unit activities can explain the results. We reply briefly to Cook's arguments here (and in Kosslyn, Chabris, Marsolek, Jacobs & Koenig, 1995) and discuss how new simulations can confirm the importance of receptive field size as a crucial variable in the encoding of categorical and coordinate spatial relations and the corresponding shape representations; such simulations would testify to the computational distinction between the different types of representations.     

Computational Evidence for the Subitizing Phenomenon as an Emergent Property of the Human Cognitive Architecture

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies.     

Neural Network Models and Mechanisms of Strategy Development

The focus of this paper is mechanisms that may be responsible for intellectual and developmental differences in the cognitive strategies of typical and atypical children, including those with mental retardation. The discussion of these mechanisms is based on behavioral experiments on external memory strategies and on a set of neural network models designed for these tasks. Following the review of the external memory research, the rationale for using neural network models, how they have been used in other research, and their specific application to intellectual and developmental differences in external memory, including the results of several simulations, are reviewed. This is followed by a discussion of the mechanisms of intellectual differences and developmental change included in the models and some challenges for this type of modeling. Neural network modeling is discussed as an asset to research on cognitive development.     

A Biologically Plausible Action Selection System for Cognitive Architectures: Implications of Basal Ganglia Anatomy for Learning and Decision‐Making Models

Several attempts have been made previously to provide a biological grounding for cognitive architectures by relating their components to the computations of specific brain circuits. Often, the architecture's action selection system is identified with the basal ganglia. However, this identification overlooks one of the most important features of the basal ganglia—the existence of a direct and an indirect pathway that compete against each other. This characteristic has important consequences in decision‐making tasks, which are brought to light by Parkinson's disease as well as genetic differences in dopamine receptors. This paper shows that a standard model of action selection in a cognitive architecture (ACT‐R) cannot replicate any of these findings, details an alternative solution that reconciles action selection in the architecture with the physiology of the basal ganglia, and extends the domain of application of cognitive architectures. The implication of this solution for other architectures and existing models are discussed.     

Blockchain Technology as an Institution of Property

This paper argues that the practical implementation of blockchain technology can be considered an institution of property similar to legal institutions. Invoking Penner's theory of property and Hegel's system of property rights, and using the example of bitcoin, it is possible to demonstrate that blockchain effectively implements all necessary and sufficient criteria for property without reliance on legal means. Blockchains eliminate the need for a third‐party authority to enforce exclusion rights, and provide a system of universal access to knowledge and discoverability about the property rights of all participants and how the system functions. The implications of these findings are that traditional property relations in society could be replaced by or supplemented with blockchain models, and implemented in new domains.     

Husserl on Intentionality as an Essential Property of Consciousness

In the phenomenological tradition intentionality is considered to be an essential property of consciousness. Philosophers from this tradition （Brentano, Husserl, Sartre, etc.） generally share the following two commitments： （i） intentionality is an essential property of consciousness; and （ii） all intentional states are directed at, and are intentionally related to, objects. This view of consciousness has two pressing problems. Firstly, philosophers such as John Searle and David Rosenthal have suggested raw feelings and some forms of seemingly undirected and thus non-intentional feelings as counterexamples to the essential intentionality of conscious states. Secondly, some analytical philosophers and Husserlian scholars inspired by Frege, such as Smith and Follesdal, deny that every intentional state is related to a correlative object. This paper presents a Husserlian view concerning the essential intentionality of consciousness. It will be shown that both problems can be successfully dealt with from an essentially Husserlian and phenomenological perspective.     

Consociated Contemporaries as an Emergent Realm of the Lifeworld: Extending Schutz's Phenomenological Analysis to Cyberspace

According to the differences in the spatial-temporal co-location of human individuals, Alfred Schutz divided the contemporaneous lifeworld into two major realms: the realm of consociates made up of individuals sharing a community of space and a community of time, and the realm of contemporaries made up of individuals sharing neither a community of space nor a community of time. Extending Schutz's phenomenological analysis to cyberspace, this paper delineates an emergent third realm – the realm of consociated contemporaries, in which individuals share a community of time without sharing a community of space. A central argument of this paper is that the emergence of this social domain in cyberspace reconfigures the structure of the lifeworld by creating a new spatial-temporal condition of human contact, which gives rise to a new mode of human interaction and a new form of human relationship. The revolution of electronic communication is therefore a revolution of the ways in which human individuals come to construct we-relationships with one another in shared meaning contexts.     

Forgetting of an operant response: Physostigmine-produced increases in escape latency in rats as a function of time of injection

Latency of a fixed ratio (FR) 3 escape response in rats was found to be a U-shaped function of the interval between training and injection of the anticholinesterase drug physostigmine, for intervals from 30 min. to 5 days between training and injection. An increase in FR 3 escape latency was found at 28 days. FR 1 escape groups produced a latency curve of a shape similar to that of the FR 3 group. These data confirm the results of earlier experiments using a different training procedure, and a different response measure. These results are consistent with the theory that the physiological correlate of rat memory lies in synaptic change.     

Religion as Cultural Models: Developing an Emic Measure of Religiosity

Despite a century's worth of work, lacunae remain in our understanding of the religion‐health relationship. Scholars in this field have called for increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of religiosity that refine its connection to well‐being, accounting for both positive and negative associations, while being sensitive to the cultural variations in the experience of religion. This article argues that cognitive anthropological methods provide a novel approach to these issues by conceptualizing aspects of religion as culturally shared “styles of life.” Specifically, the combined approaches of cultural consensus and cultural consonance provide an emically valid measure of religiosity that is then linked to health through the psychosocial stress paradigm. Utilizing research among Brazilian Pentecostals within the state of São Paulo, this intrareligious study evaluates the predictive power of religious cultural consonance relative to widely used and established religiosity scales. Religious consonance is found to have a stronger correlation with psychological well‐being than comparable measures, suggesting that existing standardized measures miss important dimensions of the religion‐health relationship. As such, this article outlines an important area of collaboration between anthropologists and other religion‐health researchers.     

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as an Emergent System: A Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective

This paper sets out to present a novel construal of one of the notions of Vygotskian cultural-historical theory viz., zone of proximal development (ZPD) drawing upon dynamic systems theory. The principal thesis maintains that ZDP is an emergent and dynamic system which is engendered by a dialectical concatenation of psychogenesic and sociogenesic facets of human development over time. It is reasoned that Vygotskian cultural-historical theory of human development, by invoking dialectical logic, has transcended Cartesian substance dualism and in turn has proffered a monistic and process-anchored ontology for emerging becoming of human consciousness. Likewise, it is contended that dynamic systems theory, having assumed fluent flux of reality with a capital R as its ontological axiom, entails a consilience of cognitive and contextual conceptual schemes to describe, explain, and optimize human development. The paper concludes by drawing some interpretive conclusions in regard to ZPD from dynamic systems theory perspective.     

Mapping Attitude Formation as a Function of Information Input: Online Processing Models of Attitude Formation

Consistent with calls for a dynamical social psychology (Jacoby et al., 1987; Nowak, Lewenstein, & Vallacher, 1994), attitude formation was studied using a recently developed, computer‐based simulation technique termed Higher Order Cognitive Tracing (see Jacoby et al., 1994). Participants’ attitudes toward 12 different products in 3 product categories were investigated as a function of incremental information input. As opposed to traditional memory‐based models of attitude formation, the study explored online processing models. Results indicate that the impact of information tends to decrease the later in the sequence that information is accessed. In addition, new information that is affectively inconsistent with prior information tends to have a greater impact on attitudes than information that is affectively redundant. This effect is more pronounced earlier rather than later in the sequence of information acquisition. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Evaluating the Viability of Neurocognition as a Transdiagnostic Construct Using Both Latent Variable Models and Network Analysis

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - The relational structure of psychological symptoms and disorders is of crucial importance to mechanistic and causal research. Methodologically,...     

The Power of Change: Interpersonal Attraction as a Function of Attitude Similarity and Attitude Alignment

Abstract

In an experimental simulation with Israeli participants, the author examined the influence of two aspects of pre-employment screening (duration of screening and type of testing) on applicants' attitudes toward a recruitment effort and toward a potential job. Testing that lasted longer led to more favorable attitudes. The participants considered knowledge testing, compared with personality testing, more job related, less invasive of privacy, and less sensitive to the amount of time spent testing.     

Analysis of Narrative Discourse Structure as an Ecologically Relevant Measure of Executive Function in Adults

This study examined the narrative discourse production and executive function (EF) abilities of 46 neuro-typical adults (18–98 years old). Two questions were addressed: Is the analysis of narrative structure sensitive to changes associated with aging? & What is the relationship between measures of narrative structure and EF? Narratives were elicited under two conditions and narrative structure was analyzed for the presence of organizing story grammar elements. Narrative structure was significantly correlated with age as well as linguistic and non-linguistic measures of EF. Factor analysis of story structure and EF variables yielded two factors reflecting constructs of output-fluidity and organizational-efficiency. These data suggest that narrative structure and EF represent aspects of goal-directed knowledge that are not bound by a traditional linguistic and non-linguistic division. Thus, narrative structure may represent a global and ecologically valid measure of goal-directed executive function knowledge that is also sensitive to changes associated with typical aging.     

Testing an Adaptationist Theory of Trait Covariation: Relative Bargaining Power as a Common Calibrator of an Interpersonal Syndrome

This article provides the first test of an adaptationist ‘common calibration’ theory to explain the origins of trait covariation, which holds that (i) personality traits are often facultatively calibrated in response to cues that ancestrally predicted the reproductive payoffs of different trait levels and (ii) distinct traits that are calibrated on the basis of common input cues will exhibit consistent patterns of covariation. This theory is applied to explain the covariation within a ‘personality syndrome’ encompassing various interpersonal trait dimensions (e.g. extraversion, emotionality and attachment styles). Specifically, it is hypothesized that these traits are inter‐correlated because each is calibrated in response to relative bargaining power (RBP)—a joint function of one's ability to benefit others and harm others. Path analyses from a correlational study compellingly supported this theoretical model: Objective and self‐perceived measures of RBP‐enhancing phenotypic features (physical attractiveness and physical strength) influenced an internal regulatory variable indexing RBP (i.e. self‐perceived RBP), which in turn had robust effects on each of the focal personality traits. Moreover, in support of the theory's core postulate, controlling for self‐perceived RBP greatly reduced the covariation within the interpersonal syndrome. These novel findings illustrate the promise of an evolutionary psychological approach to elucidating trait covariation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conceptual Innovation in Fichte's Theory of Property: The Genesis of Leisure as an Object of Distributive Justice

Fichte's definitions of property appear to diverge from modern common linguistic usage, especially his identification of leisure as the object of an absolute right of property, and they may even appear arbitrary. I argue that these definitions are not in fact arbitrary. Rather, any divergence from common linguistic usage can be explained in terms of a conceptual innovation which consists in expanding or modifying a concept by thinking it through, thereby generating new content. In the case of Fichte's theory of property, this content turns out to be leisure as the primary object of a theory of distributive justice. The conceptual innovation found in Fichte's theory of property invites a reconceptualization of the relation between work and freedom.